Sunday, 6 March 2016

Game Design - Tackling

So, in implementing the defending team tactics, we encounter the player tackle state. But what is a tackle?

I mean, we know abstractly what a tackle in football is, but the action must have a consequential mechanical reality in the game engine.

There are two kinds of tackle: the slide tackle and the standing tackle.

The mechanical reality of the slide tackle is pretty straight forward. The player launches towards the ball, and if his feet touch it, he knocks it forward in the same direction, thus dispossessing the attacking player. Players with a better rating for tackling will have a longer and more accurate "lunge."

But what about the standing tackle? What does it mean in the game to "tackle" in this way?

The existing game mechanics of dribbling/controlling have the defending player take over ownership of the ball when it is within his control range. So in practice, the defending player just has to run into the ball to do a "tackle." Simple.

The additional layer is the player attributes. For example, a player good at tackling vs a player bad at dribbling will result in the defending player winning the "struggle for control of the ball" almost every time.

One final quirk not seen in Sensi, is that we will implement deflections. So if an attacking player simply dribbles into the path of an opposition player, he can not run straight through him - it will result in the ball deflecting off the defending player. This also applies to the ball in open play - if it is traveling too fast to control it will deflect off players in its path.

The above considerations are designed to make your tactical instruction actually matter in the game engine.

So, the upshot of all that for the state machine system is -

The default defend state remains the same: Cover. In this state the player merely tries to get to the sector dictated by the tactic.

Depending on the team tactical instructions, the player may transition from the cover state to the press state. It is only within the press state that the player has the possibility to transition to a tackle state.